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en-usEngadget is a web magazine with obsessive daily coverage of everything new in gadgets and consumer electronicsCopyright 2018 AOL Inc. The contents of this feed are available for non-commercial use only.https://www.engadget.com/2017/11/22/net-neutrality-transparency-fcc-ajit-pai-proposal-isp/https://www.engadget.com/2017/11/22/net-neutrality-transparency-fcc-ajit-pai-proposal-isp/https://www.engadget.com/2017/11/22/net-neutrality-transparency-fcc-ajit-pai-proposal-isp/#comments

The Federal Communications Commission's proposal to dismantle net neutrality deletes the past two years of regulatory progress and essentially thrusts the internet back into the mid-1990s. Under chairman Ajit Pai, the FCC plans to remove the current ban on throttling, blocking or prioritization schemes, and revoke the internet conduct standard, which allows the commission to investigate zero-rating plans. Pai's proposal strips the internet of its status as a "common carrier" under Title II of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, drastically reducing regulation for internet service providers like Verizon, Comcast and AT&T.

As the FCC tears down the rules that sustain a free and open internet, it's placing an incredible amount of faith in the honesty of for-profit ISPs. To offset decreased oversight, the FCC is relying on a new brand of transparency: ISPs will be responsible for publicly disclosing whether they're blocking, throttling or prioritizing any online content. Remember, these practices aren't prohibited in the new proposal.

It's not just companies like Google asking the Federal Election Commission to improve disclosure for online political ads. A group of 15 Democrat senators (led by Sens. Claire McCaskill, Amy Klobuchar and Mark Warner) has filed an official comment calling on the FEC to take "immediate action" increasing the transparency for internet political ads. Russia took advantage of exemptions in political ad law to influence the 2016 presidential election without revealing its involvement, the senators argued, and that could be "the norm" if the Commission doesn't step in. Internet ads should be scrutinized just as closely as their TV and radio counterparts, according to the senators.

Facebook has had a rough few months since the election. At least 10 million people saw Russian-placed political ads on the platform, which may have helped widen the rift between political sides during the 2016 US presidential election. In reaction, the social network has pledged to hand-review any new ads that target politics and race. Further, Facebook has just announced that it will be rolling out new transparency features for all ads, including political ones, starting next month in Canada. The US will get the new tools by next summer, in time for the US midterm elections next November.

Security software firm Kaspersky has had a rough year. As a means of trying to fix its public image, the company will now submit the source code for its anti-virus software to independent third-parties for review, Reuters reports. That starts next year, and there's also plans to open three "transparency centers" around the world by 2020. The first will open in 2018.

In theory, body cameras are supposed to not only catch police abuses of power, but deter them: officers will be on their best behavior knowing that they could be hauled in. As Washington, DC researchers have learned, though, that isn't guaranteed. They've published a study showing that body cameras didn't significantly affect officers' use of force or the number of civilian complaints in either direction. While there were actually 74 more uses of force per 1,000 officers when body cams were present, that's roughly consistent with a typical range of differences when the equipment comes into play. The changes could just easily be pinned on variances in crime rates, in other words.

Now that Facebook has given Russia-linked ads to Congress, it's outlining what it'll do to prevent such a suspicious ad campaign from happening in the future. To begin with, it's promising to make ads more transparent -- it's writing tools that will let you see all the ads a Page runs, not just the ones targeting you. In theory, this could help concerned people spot questionable advertising without requiring help from Facebook or third parties. Most of Facebook's efforts, however, center around toughening the ad review process and the standards that guide them.

Apple hasn't always been very open about its technology or its research, but the company surprised everyone last year when AI director Russ Salakhutdinov announced that Apple would begin publishing its machine learning research. Shortly thereafter, it published its first AI paper in an academic journal and today Apple takes its transparency another step with the debut of its Machine Learning Journal.

Reversing yet another Obama-era practice, the Trump administration announced on Friday that it will not only be keeping its visitor logs secret for five years after Trump leaves office, but will be shuttering the Open.gov portal. This is where the previous administration posted visitor logs, financial disclosures and data on White House staff.

Microsoft has repeatedly sworn that Windows 10 doesn't violate your privacy, but you've had to take its word on that when it hasn't outlined exactly what data it shares from your PC. At last, though, it's coming clean -- the company has started publishing a complete list of the diagnostic info it collects at the Basic level, and has posted a thorough summary of what it obtains at the Full level. While Microsoft already gave you a good sense of what to expect if you went with Full, the summary is much more thorough... and a little concerning given that it's the default level with a new Windows 10 installation.

Police are frequently fond of monitoring protesters, and that includes cops in New York -- NYPD cameras have been a mainstay at large protests over the past several years. However, it's now clear that the NYPD has been skirting internal rules in the process. The Verge has obtained documents showing that the force's video team not only captured over 400 Black Lives Matter and Occupy Wall Street protests between 2011 and 2016, but doesn't appear to have received authorizations or legal reviews.

If it wasn't already clear that Twitter is serious about stamping out pro-terrorist accounts, it is now. The social network has posted its transparency report for the second half of 2016, which reveals that it suspended over 376,000 accounts for backing terrorism. That's triple the 125,000 it took down one year earlier, and a still-hefty 60 percent more than the 235,000 accounts it pulled in the first half of 2016. While some officials still don't think Twitter is up to snuff (it's not proactively reporting extremist material to police, the UK says), there's no doubt that it's considerably more aggressive.

Two months into the Trump presidency, there's still a lot of uncertainty surrounding the new administration. One big area of concern is how the executive branch will deal with the vast amounts of data collected by the government. Federal agencies like NASA and EPA conduct countless studies crucial to understanding our impact on climate change. Labor Department surveys are vital to determining the economic health of the country. Will the administration manipulate data that contradicts its political views? Will information become a tool of oppression? Turns out there's a simpler, but potentially just as troublesome possibility: The White House could simply make it disappear.

Late last year, Sp0n released a Vigilante mobile app that was supposed to warn you of nearby crimes and emergencies. Or rather, it tried to release the app -- Apple quickly pulled the title after worrying that the name and focus encouraged users to thrust themselves into dangerous situations. After a few months of retooling, however, it's back. The newly rebadged Citizen for Android and iOS will still warn you when someone nearby has reported an emergency to 911, but the emphasis this time is on safety. If there's a robbery in progress down the street, you're encouraged to avoid it. If you are caught up in an incident, however, you'll have tools at your disposal.

New FCC chairman Ajit Pai announced today that he wants the commission wants to be more transparent in how information on its proceedings is made available to the public. Pai detailed a new pilot program that will make documents relating to upcoming FCC Open Meetings available through the agency's website before those meetings take place. In the past, any documents circulated among members of the commission were kept under wraps until after the final vote on a matter.

After Facebook realized that it had been overstating video views for years, it conducted an internal review to search for more flaws messing with its ad data... and it's not happy with what it found. The social network reports that it found multiple problems with how it calculated or represented the info that marketers thrive on. It wasn't always counting end-to-end video playback properly, for example, since clip lengths would occasionally change when you started streaming. Facebook also over-reported how long people spent reading Instant Articles, and included more clicks and views than it should in some dashboards.

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adsadvertisingauditculturefacebookinstantarticlesinternetmarketingmetricssocialnetworksocialnetworkingtransparencyWed, 16 Nov 2016 13:08:00 -050021|21607471https://www.engadget.com/2016/09/30/china-now-streams-some-court-trials-on-the-internet/https://www.engadget.com/2016/09/30/china-now-streams-some-court-trials-on-the-internet/https://www.engadget.com/2016/09/30/china-now-streams-some-court-trials-on-the-internet/#comments
In China, some court cases will now be streamed on the internet for the public to view across the country. The Chinese government isn't exactly known for transparency, but this is certainly a step in that direction. As you might expect, not all cases will be aired. The BBC reports "sensitive trials," like those of human rights activists, may be among the topics excluded from the program.
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chinacourtculturegovernmentinternetstreamingtransparencyFri, 30 Sep 2016 11:52:00 -040021|21483943https://www.engadget.com/2016/09/24/clinton-email-publishing-schedule-will-run-past-election/https://www.engadget.com/2016/09/24/clinton-email-publishing-schedule-will-run-past-election/https://www.engadget.com/2016/09/24/clinton-email-publishing-schedule-will-run-past-election/#comments

Hope you aren't waiting for the State Department to publish every last document from Hillary Clinton's private email server before making a voting decision -- you're going to be disappointed. A federal judge has set a schedule that will only publish 1,050 pages of recently recovered material (out of roughly 10,000 pages) by November 4th, mere days before the US presidential election on the 8th. The Department has promised to process 500 pages per month, so you won't get the full scoop until well after the next president takes office.

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culturedepartmentofstateelectionelection2016emailfbigovernmenthillaryclintoninternetlawpoliticsstatedepartmenttransparencySat, 24 Sep 2016 18:39:00 -040021|21478507https://www.engadget.com/2016/09/05/amazon-apple-google-back-microsoft-gag-order-lawsuit/https://www.engadget.com/2016/09/05/amazon-apple-google-back-microsoft-gag-order-lawsuit/https://www.engadget.com/2016/09/05/amazon-apple-google-back-microsoft-gag-order-lawsuit/#comments
Microsoft isn't going it alone in its lawsuit fighting gag orders for data requests. Amazon, Apple, Google and Mozilla have contributed to a friend-of-the-court brief supporting Microsoft's case against the US government over the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, which lets officials bar companies from telling customers when officials want their info. In theory, the brief could sway the court's decision and have it deem the ECPA a violation of the constitutional right to be informed about searches and seizures.

WikiLeaks will tell you that it's providing valuable transparency while respecting the privacy of innocent people, but the Associated Press isn't convinced that it's walking that fine line. It just published a report showing that Julian Assange and crew published sensitive details for "hundreds" of innocent people, including financial records, identity details and medical files. Among the examples, it identified teen rape victims. Many of last year's leaked Saudi Arabia cables exposed details that could potentially ruin lives in the conservative country, such as the name of a man arrested for being gay and people who've secretly gone into debt.

There's no question that algorithms can be biased, producing results that reflect the creator's preconceived opinions. But how do you reliably detect signs of that bias? Carnegie Mellon researchers can help. They've developed a system that tests algorithms to see how much influence a given variable has over the outcome, giving you a sense of where bias exists. It could reveal when a credit score system is giving any weight to racial discrimination, or catch simple mistakes that put too much emphasis on a particular factor.

So much for US intelligence scaling back its curiosity in the wake of Edward Snowden's leaks. An Office of the Director of National Intelligence transparency report has revealed that the CIA and NSA doubled the number of searches for the content of Americans' communications in an NSA database between 2013 and 2015. Where the two agencies made about 2,100 such requests three years ago, they searched 4,672 times last year. Just what triggered the spike isn't clear. There's a chance that some of the increase comes from repetitive searches (that is, running similar queries more than once), but they were also factors in 2013 -- the odds are that activity went up.

How much progress has Google made on securing your internet traffic ever since Edward Snowden's leaks made it clear that encryption is crucial to maintaining privacy? Quite a bit, if you ask Google itself. As part of its latest Transparency Report, the search firm has revealed that over 75 percent of its internet requests use encryption. That's steep climb from just over 50 percent back at the start of 2014, just a few months after the scope of the US' mass surveillance became clear.

Back in June, President Obama signed the USA Freedom Act into law. The bill finally put limitations on the NSA's ability to bulk collect telephone data under the controversial section 215 of the Patriot Act. As part of the new bill, the NSA was compelled to release a transparency report detailing if it was meeting the privacy standards enacted by the Freedom Act. Today, the agency has published its first report, conducted by the NSA's Civil Liberties and Privacy Office (CLPO).

Politwoops is back in action, capturing and storing the boneheaded mistakes of politicians around the world. Twitter pulled the plug on the site last June, claiming that it violated user privacy and its terms and conditions. However, newly reinstated CEO Jack Dorsey said that Twitter has a responsibility to aid public transparency and specifically called out Politwoops as the kind of organization he wants to support. After Twitter reinstated the site last week, it's now back online, and its parent, the Open State Foundation has added some features in the interim.

Back in June, Twitter pulled the plug on Politwoops, a site that cataloged the idiotic things that politicians post on the social networks. At the time, the company said the website violated its terms of use and that the collection of tweets was a privacy issue. Now, Twitter has reached agreements with The Sunlight Foundation and The Open State Foundation in regards to the site. Politwoops will be able to resume its storing of tweets, both published and deleted, in the US and abroad.